Policies and Procedures

Commenting on the wiki

If you have questions or comments on the format, content, or organization of the WESS Wiki (or if you would like to get editing permission i.e., password access), please feel free to contact the wiki master by e-mail: wess @ byu.edu.

Creating an account

In order to edit you will need to authenticate, which means you need a logon. To create a logon, contact wiki master above for user name and password. Your user name will be your WESS Wiki logon ID.

Getting started editing a page

Editing a wiki page is extremely simple.

First, we've configured this wiki to only allow editing from people who have logged in. If you haven't already created an ID for the wiki, see the instructions above.

Assuming that the page you want to edit already exists (see the information below on how to create a new page), go to the page. At the top of the page are a number of tabs. One of these should be edit. Click on this tab and the contents of the page will appear in a text box.

If the page you want does not yet exist, you may name it in "edit" mode on the page from which it will link, using double square brackets in this manner: [[File Name]] or [[File Name | Display Alternate File Name]]. Then, after saving the editing, you can click on the "File Name" (in red), resulting in a blank slate for you to add the file.

The page will either use the wiki markup tags, or HTML, or both. In general you can use HTML that would be appropriate under the <body> division, but be careful about extreme formatting since it may conflict with the wiki's own formatting.

Using either the wiki markup tags or HTML, edit the content of the page. If you are adding information to a discussion page, be sure to sign your work by typing four tildes after your addition. These will be replaced with your name and the time.

Below the edit box you will see a text field labeled Summary. Type in a brief explanation of what you have done. This information is very useful to others in order to see what type of changes you have made.

Below the summary box are two boxes. The This is a minor edit box is used to flag content changes that are minor, by your own definition. Again as others view the changes they may choose to ignore minor changes. Checking the Watch this page box will add this page to your watch list.

Below these two boxes are two buttons. The Show preview button is very useful to see what your page is going to look like without saving it permanently. The Save page button will add your changes to the wiki and close the editing screen.

That's it. You've just edited a page in WESS Wiki language.

This is a link to Wikipedia showing the wiki markup tags: Editing a page

Creating a new page and WESS naming conventions

In general, creating a new page is done by creating a link from an existing page. The wiki doesn't like pages to be isolated (called: "orphaned pages") and does not provide a convenient way to create them without linking from somewhere else. For naming a file, it is important to use a unique file name that is unlikely to be ambiguous in the future. Wikipedia also documents starting a new page.

Practicing in the Sandbox

If you'd like to see how editing and formatting works, feel free to play in the WESS Sandbox. Keep in mind that the entries will be erased from time to time, so when you are ready to contribute real stuff, get out of the sandbox.

Getting help

You can contact the wiki creator (wess @ byu.edu) for questions and assistance.